The beginning of my helper journey beyond corporate was bumpy at best. Betting on myself after building such a successful corporate career was energizing and, at the same time, unnerving.
What if I didn’t make any money? What if, once I shed the big brand associated with my name, no one wanted to hire me? This fear of being perceived as a “nobody” led me to significantly undervalue my work at first.
It wasn’t all in my head. The value dynamics were real. There was “Hallmark Tara” who led Mahogany and multicultural strategy and worked with Dr. Maya Angelou, and then there was Tara Jaye Frank standing solo—without the brand, influence, connections, or budget. I built my company from insight and experience and talent, but there were no “legs up.” No shortcuts. No catapults.
I was once offered a magazine feature in recognition of my accomplishments. I accepted, but when I updated my employment status, they rescinded the offer. They didn’t really want to recognize me. They just wanted Hallmark to pay for an advertisement and a gala table.
These moments felt awful. You go from being the person everyone wants something from to the person people assume wants something from them. To this day, I remain “unimportant” in the ways many acknowledge and celebrate. And while I once mourned the automatic legitimacy that comes with titles and brand credibility, I am beginning to see the limitations of it. All of it.
I’ve been reading Richard Rohr’s new book The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom For the Age of Outrage. In Chapter 3, he writes about the remnant—a small group who “learned to work inside littleness, failure and rejection from a non-responsive audience,” and that “carries the love and hope of restoration forward after the trials and tribulations that people endure.”
He goes on to explain that “because power distorts truth, God plants and develops it at the edge, where the power hungry least expect it.”
At the edge.
Every day, I work on behalf of people at the edge. My company in general and our methodology in particular are built to deeply understand this “edge” experience compared to the “core” experience, then to bridge the gap so that all people might enjoy visibility, respect, value, and protection at work. And so that those in the core can clearly see all the insight, ideas, passion, and potential they’ve been missing.
I know about the edge. In big and small ways, the edge is where I’ve lived my whole life.
Is it true that we—those who’ve been left out or left behind—are able to see the world and its ills more readily? That because we’ve had to painstakingly measure the distance between our efforts and our outcomes, we somehow recognize the truth of a thing before other people do?
The passage in Rohr’s book brought to mind the 92% of Black women who voted for equality and community care but whose wisdom and foresight were handily rejected on November 5th, 2024. Many Americans are expressing shock and dismay at how the country is changing, and at how rapidly this change is occurring.
But while I am pained by the unraveling, I am not at all shocked. I knew it was possible—probable even—that “the least of these” would not only be forgotten, but discarded without hesitation.
While it’s difficult to watch, I take some comfort in spiritual leaders like Rohr, because they help me put what we’re watching into a more expansive and enduring context. Rohr says that disorder is a necessary precursor to reorder—an idea I’ve been calling reconstruction in my own life—as it illuminates brokenness in the existing order for those previously unwilling or unable to see it. If this is where we are now, I welcome it. We will never create a more loving and caring society if only those on the edge recognize and appreciate the need.
In the meantime, I’m doing what good I can with what I have. I’m loving people in real life without laying myself bare, writing my reflections and sharing them, making one-pot pasta, and loosely observing the disorder. From the edge.
Tara Jaye Frank
